Just Leave Me Alone

What could be more American than the phrase, “just leave me alone.” We love our liberties. We love our freedoms. God bless America! We want to be able to worship as we so choose. Some people even go as far as baptizing their babies…but hey, tomato-tomato I guess. We want to be able to work hard and be profitable even after acquiring fifteen licenses to sell lemonade, but hey – I guess we have representation now – and if we don’t call it a tax, is it really a tax?

Anyway, you get the point. We want to be able to love the Lord, love our families, build

something and love our communities without the velvet gloved iron first of government care loving us to death. There is another way we often say this, this way has a little more weight because there is history behind it. It comes from way back yonder when our ancestors had spines and walked upright. “Don’t Tread On Me” is the way we used to say it.

Now, we just want to be left alone. A sentiment I can’t help but sympathize with greatly,

however this sentiment is not enough. Having just recently moved my family from a deep blue state to a deep red state where the sentiment of “just leave me alone” seems to be interwoven into the very warp and woof of the culture, so then, this “random thought” comes as half part gratitude and half part warning.

I came across a quote by Steve Deace the other day where he said,

“I promise you ‘just leave me alone’ loses in every history book ever. ‘Don’t rock the boat’ loses in every history book ever. ‘Don’t use my name I can’t lose my job’ loses in every history book ever. ‘I didn’t think it was my place’ loses in every history book ever.”

The reason for this, is that the enemy will not leave you alone. When our geriatric resident and chief, Joe Biden ran his shampaign in 2020, he said, or at least his puppeteers said, he was running for the soul of America. He/they weren’t lying. The nature of progressivism is to consume like a virus. Therefore, any form of compromise is failure on the front end. In part this is why conservatives suck so bad. As politicians, they believe being political and stuff is the fine art of compromise.

But to compromise is to concede and to not conserve by very definition. Multiply that several times over and you get where we are at today. Constantly taking one step forward and two steps back in the name of politics, kinda like a five percent tax cut after a fifteen percent increase being a victory ends up with chicks with dicks winning every single female sports competition and showering with your daughters.

And if you agree with what I just said but don’t approve of the way I said it…well, one step forward and two steps back. Once you concede the language game in principle, and exercise pronoun hospitality you’ve already conceded all the consequences that follow, like chicks with dicks. You’re welcome.

Anyway, C.S. Lewis said,

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” 

What these people are doing, they truly believe they are doing it for your own good and they will not stop. You may want to be left alone but they will not leave you alone. And a mere desire for mere Christendom, or simply baptizing your babies isn’t gonna to cut it. I spent forty-four years in Grand Rapids Michigan, the Jerusalem of the Midwest, which is now much more like Jerusalem in A.D. 69. The Reformed capital of the world is gayer than RuPaul in June, and is about as upright.

I now live in what’s known as the Bible-belt and can tell you it is nothing compared to Grand Rapids. And yet, Michigan enshrined in their state constitution the right to murder your baby up to the time of birth, and the gentile mutilation of children. They just recently passed redflag laws, and a pronoun hate speech law. When I tell people I’m from Michigan down here, they smile and refer to it as either little Canada or little Islam because of the east side of the state…

All of this happened because the people of God continually exercised depravity hospitality, and they’re definitely not racist. Or they considered it base and vulgar to speak about such things…being political and all. Or they spoke about such things but in a nice way. Or, in classical conservative fashion, they spoke about it after the fact when it cost them nothing. Either way, it is a clear example of what Deace warned against. And is also a clear example that a church with no backbone will conform to whatever idol is thrown at it like slime over a totem-pole.

My point being, that if Grand Rapids can be turned into a liberal toilet bowl any city, or small town can. Sleeping at the wheel is still sleeping regardless of the size of the car. “Just leave me alone,” assumes that you are dealing with people that will. They won’t. Now what? The only way to stand against this juggernaut is to stand on principle. To stand on something bigger and greater than all of their moral-busybodyness, namely the law-word of God.

Until we get to that point, we are simply standing from a place of discomfort and discomfort may be a strong motivator, but’s it a consequence of a conceded principle and will only take you so far, before compromise will set in, so that you may lull back to a place of comfort…this is the one step forward…which is always followed by the two steps back. Which, in part is why most conservatives and evangelicals exert a lot of energy to fail.

"Just leave me alone" is not a strategy for success, and I may even own a couple “Don’t Tread On Me” T-shirts – but, by itself, this sentiment builds nothing. The longer a tumor grows in a body the more painful it will be to cut it out and kill all of the residual effects. Where are we at as a church and a country? Only God knows, and it’s true that some of the greatest reformations have come from times of trial and suffering.

However, this also implies acknowledgment of said suffering, and “just leave me alone,” isn’t exactly that. Freedom isn’t free and the longer we go down this road the more costly it will be to get it back. Cheers!